A Blasted History of Noise

Craig Leonard’s “Sun Ra to Sunn O))) – A Blasted History of Noise” is an hour-long audio performance presenting over 100 significant noise albums from 1965 to the present. Leonard will masterfully create a flow of 30-second samples from alternating records continuously intersecting across two turntables, working his way chronologically through albums such as Sun Ra’s “The Magic City” (1965) to Dave Phillips “They Live” (2009). This idiosyncratic compilation and presentation of noise benchmarks is culled from the artist’s own collection, set at an upper limit of 100 that is daunting but by no means exhaustive. The general criterion is that the records explore sound experimentation, and specifically noise: dissonance, volume, distortion, unpredictability and chaos.